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Martine Syms Profiled in the New Yorker

Photo courtesy of Manfredi Gioacchini with iIlustration by Adam Ferriss

The New Yorker recently published a profile of SAIC alum Martine Syms (BFA 2007). Syms discusses the inspiration behind the works featured in Projects 106 (her first US solo museum exhibition, on display through July 16 at the MoMA), growing up in Los Angeles, brief stints in branding, and above all else what it means to accomplish what she has while navigating the world as a Black woman.

At 29, Syms is a force to be reckoned with—she graduated from the School at just 19 before eventually moving back to Los Angeles to open an independent press (Dominica Publishing) and pursue creative documentary film-work. Her thesis project, a mash up of a scene from the MTV reality show Real World: New York in which two housemates argue over a racist slight, is very much informed by the questions she continues to grapple with in her work today. Of the show she asks, “Is it a documentation? Or is it a production?” These provide the basis for her most recent film, Incense, Sweaters, and Ice, which depicts the lives of three (mostly nameless) characters as they negotiate the complicated intersection of performance and surveillance.

You can watch Syms’ thesis project My Only Idol is Reality, and more of her works at the Video Data Bank.

After nearly a decade of defining taste at the Art Institute of Chicago, John McKinnon (MA 2008) is taking his talents to Elmhurst Art Museum.
McKinnon will be stepping down from his position as program director at the Art Institute's Society for Contemporary Art to take over as executive director at Elmhurst Art Museum.

For 150 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program consistently ranking among the top programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries, and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alumni and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, Jeff Koons, and LeRoy Neiman.